Chasing the dots … Cookery and Crookery!

One of the pleasures of writing is my ego is occasionally boosted by small but often argumentative mail to bring me back to earth! Yes I support democratic process but on reflection maybe because I view it as a way to divert the evils of dictatorship and its horrors but then I look at many successful regimes over the last two hundred years where dictators often turned poor and insignificant states, in collaboration sometimes with organised crime and human rights abuses into significant players on the world stage.

Ouch.That same reflection however also shows that such dictators often became captive to their own egos and power addiction. As such their original good intentions became perverted and once their abuses passed a tipping point internal, usually violent rebellion, often removed them with varying impact on the progress achieved.But recent such dictatorships or rule by a few have had notable successes; South Korea, Singapore and maybe Ghana. Their emerging success has been reinforced by a progressive acceptance that increasing wealth and security requires increasing involvement by the emerging middle class, some form of democratic process with choices. Each to its own but societal development ultimately rejects being sat on! And this applies to all ‘classes’ as one contributor pointed out, while professing a democratic culture Namibia seems to miss out those from Havana, Babylon and I will add Mix.All this came to mind when a refreshing but slightly disturbing article appeared giving support to our high flying overseas MTI trips and the results gained. So the Hilton franchise was activated by such a trip. Indubitably this chain will do well as now the booking agencies can feather their nests a little more by bulk business including their many other outlets. Their clients, the political upclass, the very wealthy and others of less repute but with bags of cash quite validly will stay there; such chains offer all sorts of additional perks if my memory of similar chains from my past remain clear! But how much money remains in Namibia? How many Namibian jobs?But it was more than this when an acquaintance came visiting with a bottle of water from a meeting held there. It was a very sexy bottle and certainly not African sourced; a product for the super rich. This brought back a similar experience attending a local workshop lead by MTI where the bottled water was imported from South Africa! And both bottles had ‘sell-by’ dates! What is wrong with the old jug, tap water and glass? Are we losing it or is it just me when half our population cannot afford (?) to pay for water from the stand pipe!This brought to mind another insanity where we, as the people, allow ourselves to be deluded. Cooking programmes. Here you watch ‘chefs’ supposedly manipulating and cooking food, ‘experts’, who are masters of rhetoric, not taste, shovel out shows varying from the impossible to the obscene, from orderly, well mannered consumption to disgusting orgies of obese pigs. Then to be told how tasty, nice smelling and well cooked the product is. All delusional as the TV has neither ‘smellies’ or ‘tasties’ or ‘feelies’. And we believe these idiots!We live in a world of delusion. Our politics are like cooking shows. We ignore the 50% unemployed. We mutter when babies die of negligence. Grade 12 kids can hardly read. Meanwhile our leaders cruise the world expounding our perfection in governance, accountability, openness and ‘modest’ government. Next will be MacBurgers! Yuk.Perhaps I should become a dictator! (bad idea, past my ‘sell-by date!)csmith@mweb.com.na